4 ms·

Those numbers do brighten my outlook, but while our economy has added 9 million more workers our population has grown by almost 12 million. Isn't it appropriat

by todd8 12y ago

Those numbers do brighten my outlook, but while our economy has added 9 million more workers our population has grown by almost 12 million. Isn't it appropriate to be looking at the employment-population ratios instead of the number of workers? This chart (of the employment-population ratio) doesn't paint such a rosy picture: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

mikeyouse 12y ago
Of course population matters, but as more people are attending college (https://www.nacs.org/research/industrystatistics/higheredfactsfigures.aspx https://www.nacs.org/research/industrystatistics/higheredfac...) and as the baby boomers retire (http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/icpGraph.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/icpGraph.html), the employment ratio would naturally decrease. I like U4 as a good measure of unemployment since it also includes discouraged workers who gave up looking for jobs: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Ehe http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Ehe Obviously not a completely healthy economy, but a rate that's dropped 40% from the peak of the recession, and is back to levels comparable to 2003/2004 is a good start.